World News 19-10-2001 Review of the Year: TV Stars Targeted By Anthrax Terrorists who: CBS News anchorman Dan Rather what: Pays tribute to assistant who contracted anthrax where: NEW YORK when: Yesterday snippet: "The US government offered a $1m reward yesterday for information about those behind the spate of anthrax mailings," reports The Independent, "as it was revealed that an assistant to America`s best-known television anchorman has also been infected with the bacteria." "It is not known how the woman in the CBS office of Dan Rather contracted cutaneous anthrax," says The Telegraph, "but because she opened the post to the newsreader, it was assumed that she got it from a letter to him." The Times leads with the news that the woman in question, 27 year-old PA Claire Fletcher, is a Brit from Sheffield. Mr Rather, the "doyen of US network news anchors", has worked with Ms Fletcher for five years and described her as a close friend who is "very strong in mind, body and spirit." She is expected to make a full recovery. FBI chiefs "are pursuing substantive leads in the investigation which covers Washington, New York and Florida," reports The Sun. In addition to Ms Fletcher, writes Paul Thompson, an assistant to NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw, the baby son of an ABC TV worker in New York and postal workers in New Jersey and Florida already have the disease. Meanwhile, The Mirror goes with the headline "I`ve Got Anthrax" - an exclusive feature written by former Mirror reporter David Wright, who is one of six people to have tested positive for anthrax exposure at the offices of American Media in Boca Raton, Florida, where his colleague Bob Stevens recently "became the first person to die of dreaded pulmonary anthrax in decades." [... more]

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